SEO gets more competitive every day – unfortunately, typing in a few keywords just isn’t enough to get your website noticed anymore.
Having an understanding of SEO has become a crucial tool for the success of both your website and your brand. While many resources cover the basics of SEO, you’ll want to be familiar with some of its more nuanced concepts in order to make your web pages stand out.
Today, we’re going to dive into the topic of link building, one of the foundational elements of advanced SEO knowledge that will take your website to the next level.
Link Indexing
Though one of SEO’s more complicated concepts, link indexing is one of the most important ones to understand. Knowing how indexing plays a role in your website’s search engine rankings will allow you to modify the attention that you give certain web pages in an effort to get them on the SERP.
What is Link Indexing?
Link indexing is the process that search engines use to store and organize the information found on different pages of your website. When a search engine decides that your website provides useful content, it will add that content to its index.
Typically, website designers and owners care the most about indexing on Google because of its high user base and the sheer amount of information in its index.
All in all, Google’s search index has hundreds of billions of web pages. For each word or phrase on a web page, there is an entry into the index. For instance, the phrase “SEO Secrets” has its entry in Google’s index. Every single page that uses this phrase will be stored under this entry.
Google then uses its algorithm to determine which of these entries will be the most helpful to people searching that term. The top 10 results show up on what is known as the search engine results page (SERP).
Indexing Vs. Crawling
A search engine can’t index your site if it isn’t aware of its existence. This is where crawling comes in.
Crawling describes the process of following links on a page to new pages, then following the links on those pages to new pages, and so forth.
The process sends when a web crawler (the Google web crawler is known as the Googlebot) reaches a website with no new links left to crawl.
Google often starts the crawling process on well-known and trusted sites. Sites that already do well on Google platforms will be given priority. For example, a website that is Google News approved will be indexed more frequently as the website is updated. Its algorithm will pay attention to sites that are often referred to and consistently updated.
Essentially, crawling is the step that allows indexing to happen.
The Need for Link Indexing
To appear on a search results page, your website needs to be indexed. Otherwise, you will only be able to visit your site by typing in the exact web address in the search bar.
If you’re content with your business or organization available only to those who know the exact web address, link indexing won’t matter to you. Chances are, though, that you’re looking to attract new audiences and grow your business. You can’t begin any SEO strategies until you’re indexed first.
Indexing Vs. Deindexing
Just as a search engine can add pages from your website to its index, so, too can it remove them. When a search engine determines that a web page is no longer relevant to its index, it will remove all of its stored information.
Deindexing likely results from using illegal or blackhat SEO methods, like buying links or keyword stuffing.
Some websites will purposely deindex web pages in an attempt to reduce the amount of information being sent to Google.
Medium, the popular online writing platform, began to deindex content that is viewed as spam, explaining that it would “result in legitimate Medium creators ranking higher across all Google searches.”
How to Index Backlinks
Indexing your web pages comprises only one part of your SEO rankings. Backlinks, or links from another website that refer to yours, show Google that other websites trust your content enough to associate it with their own.
Indexers provide the easiest methods for indexing backlinks as quickly as possible.
What are Indexers?
As SEO grows more competitive, it becomes increasingly difficult to get backlinks indexed as quickly as you would like. One solution that many website owners turn to involves paying for Indexers to essentially index your backlink for Google.
Indexers are third-party platforms that jumpstart the indexing process by sending your website link to thousands of websites that can result in backlinks. The more backlinks your web page has – especially high-quality backlinks – the faster that Google will prioritize your page and begin to index those backlinks.
Can My Backlinks be Indexed?
Like any web page, any one of your backlinks can be indexed, so long as it sends the right message to search engine crawlers.
In order to make sure your backlink can be indexed, you’ll have to double-check the robots.txt file and the noindex tag. The robots.txt file will prevent your web page from being crawled by Google, making it more difficult (if not impossible) to index the site. The noindex tag flat-out tells Google not to index your site.
Once you double-check these two areas, you’re good to go. Now you’ll be ready to use indexers that will help to get your backlinks listed.
Do Backlinks Need to be Indexed to Pass Power?
Link equity, also known as link juice or link power, is the SEO factor that backlinks will pass power or authority to other web pages by referring to them. For example, if a well-regarded news source backlinks to your site, it could be said that it gives you link juice.
If the link does give you a higher standing, your SEO will improve. But does the backlink need to be indexed to pass this power to your site?
SEO experts disagree. Many believe that if the backlink isn’t indexed, the SEO benefits won’t matter. Some believe that bots crawling your website without it being officially indexed is still enough for the backlink to be fully effective. Still, others maintain that a backlink can be partially effective if not indexed, but not as much so if it were.
Check Whether Links Are Being Indexed
Now that you understand a bit more about the mechanisms behind and the process of indexing, we’ll show you how to see whether your website’s links are being indexed.Type in the following link into Google and replace link1 with your web link.
site:http://www.link1.com
If the site appears, it has been indexed. In order to check if a list of links has been indexed, you’ll have to find a link checking tool on Google.
Time to Get Backlinks Indexed
From a few weeks to upwards of months, the time for a link to index varies. While a web page could be indexed in as little as a few hours, indexing a backlink takes more time. Crawlers have to determine if both the website that backlinked you and your web page are of high enough quality to be indexed.
On Google, backlinks can be indexed in a few hours if the link is coming from a reliable source. If a website is Google News approved, backlinks will be indexed much more quickly because Google already trusts that site to provide upstanding resources.
Speed Up Link Indexing
If a few weeks have gone by and you’re still not seeing any luck, there are a few things you can do that may speed up the process. Try the following three tips.
Sitemaps
A sitemap.xml file lists all of your website pages’ URLs, the priority of certain webpages, and the last modified date. This expedites the crawling process so search engines can find and index your site faster.
Connect your website’s site map file to your Google Console account for the best data on your indexing and visibility status.
Interlinking
The more that other websites refer to your webpage, the more important it seems to search engines. When a website refers back to its links in a webpage, that link seems more important and will likely grab the attention of crawlers faster. This method is known as interlinking.
Social Media
The same concept applies to social media. The more often that Google notices a certain web page is being referenced on social media, the faster that it is likely to index that page.
Master Your SEO
Let us help you master link indexing and many other necessary SEO elements to grow your website’s reach. Reach out to our team to learn more about our personalized services!
